In this video, I'm going to show you how to change the color of anything in Lightroom.
Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel,
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to change the color of anything inside of Lightroom.
You might remember a recent tutorial where I showed you how to change the color of anything
in Photoshop, this is going to be a similar tutorial but we're going to stay inside of
Lightroom and not go into Photoshop.
Sometimes you may be working with a file where you have an object whose color you want to
change, and it's a simple object like a jacket in this example, and it's not really necessary
to go into Photoshop to make that adjustment.
So, this is what this tutorial is going to be all about.
However, I do think that Photoshop does have better masking options,
and it allows you to change the color of more complicated objects,
so, I do recommend watching that tutorial as well.
I'll place a link to it right below in the description.
Also, if you want to learn more about Lightroom, then I do have a free course on Lightroom
CC, I'll also place that right below in the description.
So, just to be clear, there's two versions of Lightroom.
There's Lightroom Classic CC, and Lightroom CC.
In this tutorial, we're going to work with Lightroom Classic CC,
which is the Lightroom that has been around for a decade.
Lightroom CC is about a year old, and that is what my free course is about.
So, if you do watch that course, you can apply the principles that you learn
and use them on Lightroom Classic.
They're pretty much the same when it comes to editing photos.
Lightroom Classic does have a few more features,
but in terms of editing photos, they're virtually the same.
Okay, let's get started.
Here we are in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC, and we have the image that we're going to
work with in the filmstrip here at the bottom.
Then I'm going to click on Develop, so that we can actually edit the image.
Now, before I show you the technique that we're going to use in this example, I'm going
to show you the method that you may be familiar with, and why it doesn't always work.
So, I'm going to click on the HSL panel, and
from here I can select any one of these colors and adjust the hue.
Notice that the hue tab is selected.
So for example, if I wanted to change the red of this jacket to another color, I can
click-and- drag the red slider to the left or to the right,
but notice that I can only shift the hue just a little bit.
I can make it magenta, or I can make it orange,
but I really can't make it into another color.
So, if I wanted to make this jacket blue, I wouldn't be able to do so with this technique.
So instead, what I recommend you do is use an alternate method.
So, I'm going to double click on the slider to reset it back to zero, then I'm going to
click on the adjustment brush.
When you paint with the adjustment brush, make sure that you select Auto Mask so that
it's easier to paint over the colors that we want to paint,
and increase the Flow to 100, and the Density as well.
Then make sure that none of the sliders have been adjusted.
If they have been adjusted, you can reset them all at once by holding Alt, Option on
the Mac, and you'll notice that the effect label changes to reset.
Then you can click, and it resets all the sliders.
Notice that when you start painting over the image, you will be able to see the mask,
the mask has a red overlay.
But if I paint directly over the jacket, you won't be able to see the red overlay
because the jacket is also red.
You can hold Shift and O on the keyboard to toggle between the different colors of the
overlay, so you can make the overlay green, white, or black.
And if you don't see the overlay, you can press the O key on the keyboard to enable it,
or even disable it.
In this example, I think that the green overlay will work best.
I'm going to toggle to that,
and I'm going to click on this point, hit the Delete key
to delete it, and now start painting the jacket.
So, if I start painting over the jacket,
you'll notice that I'm only painting over the red pixels
because I have the Auto Mask option selected.
That means that the colors that I'm clicking on over that crosshair are the colors that I'm targeting.
So, anything outside of that will not be selected.
For example, if I place a crosshair under his arm, over the red jacket and click, you
You will see that I will select the red pixels, but not the background.
So, this method allows you to paint over areas of a specific color really, really easy.
To increase or decrease the size of your brush,
keys on the keyboard.
You could also hold Shift and tap on the bracket keys to adjust the feather,
which is the sharpness
of the edge of the brush.
And you can also see how the feather slider is adjusted as I use that keyboard shortcut.
But anyway, I'm just going to quickly paint over the red areas, and you don't have to
be very precise, you can always come back and fine tune your selection.
So, now that I painted over the jacket, I can disable the overlay,
and I'm going to reduce the saturation to negative 100.
Once I do that, you'll notice that I have some areas that need some adjusting,
so I'm just going to paint on those areas
just so that I don't see any red over the jacket.
In this tutorial, I'm not going to be very precise, but of course when you're working
on a real project, you want to spend a little more time making the mask.
If you make a mistake, you can always hold Alt, Option on the Mac,
to subtract from the mask.
I think I went over the line here, so I'm just gonna paint away that area.
And for now, this is going to be good.
The next step is to add the color.
So, I'm going to come over to this section here that reads color, click on this swatch,
and just select a different color.
So, I can select blue for example, and then I can use
all these different sliders to adjust how that blue looks.
So, I can increase the contrast,
the exposure,
shadows,
blacks
and whites.
I could also increase clarity, which is contrast in the mid tones,
and I could also add sharpness to that area.
And if you zoom in by pressing the Z key,
you will see that I missed some areas.
I can come back in there and paint those in.
I may not need the Auto Mask for those areas, so I could just simply disable the auto mask
and paint over those areas.
You can see that this finger has a lot of blue on there, so we want to get rid of that.
So, I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and I'm going to paint that away.
Then I'm going to use the right bracket key on the keyboard to make that brush larger,
and I can continue painting away those blue pixels.
And obviously you want to spend a lot more time fine tuning your image, in this tutorial
it's not necessary for you to see me fine tuning the image.
All I really would do is simply paint over the areas that still have red
to remove the red from the image.
So, that's basically what I will do, just paint over all these different areas.
At this point, you can make any adjustments that you like,
including changing the color of the jacket.
So, we could make it green for example, and continue adjusting the luminance sliders.
Keep in mind that the color sliders, like temperature
and tint, won't make any adjustments
to the color because we have de-saturated the image.
But the sliders that control luminosity, definitely do have an effect on how that color looks.
So you can fine tune it and get the right color that you want for your image.
Also, it's important to note that with this adjustment, you could also apply presets.
So, when you hover over the presets, you'll see that we keep the green.
So you can change the color of an object in your photos and then apply your favorite preset.
And by the way, let me know down in the comments if this technique was new to you, and also
if you would like to see more Lightroom tutorials.
As you know, I usually publish Photoshop tutorials, but Lightroom is part of the Photoshop family,
so I guess we could make some more tutorials on Lightroom if you're interested.
Also, don't forget that I do have a free course on Lightroom CC here on YouTube
that you can watch for free.
I'll post the link down below in the description.
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Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you at the next tutorial.